


Not What I Thought It'd Be

by gateship



Series: Avengers Assemble [20]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hydra, Mission doesn't actually occur "on screen", SHIELD and the Avengers run on coffee, avengers mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 04:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11593044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gateship/pseuds/gateship
Summary: The Avengers have their first mission together as a team after the events of the Chitauri Invasion. Darcy and Jane quickly realize that watching the live security feed is probably not better than finding out what happened after the fact.





	Not What I Thought It'd Be

It was an ungodly three o’clock in the morning when Darcy’s “Avengers shit is going down” alarm went off. A couple of days after the 4th of July party Stark had notified them of the Avengers alert system he’d created. Everyone on the team and the support staff got a message sent to their phone if something was going on. Or was it that the app on the Stark phones they’d all been given went off? Whatever. Regardless, something told them something was happening. Only certain individuals were authorized to send the message – meaning Avengers, Fury, or Phil. This was the first time it had been used and it was as annoying and irritating as Darcy had expected it to be. She seriously hoped that she was the only member of the support staff that got the annoying alert tone. If Ms. Sokolof or Porter were on the same receiving end Tony was going to be in a whole heap of trouble.

When Darcy stumbled out of her room, dressed more business casual than business because the only pants she could readily find had been a pair of jeans, Thor was heading out of the room he and Jane shared. “What’s going on?” Darcy asked him, making a beeline for the fridge. Hopefully there was a bottle of Coke or something in there. While the thought of having soda this early in the morning made her stomach turn a little bit, she was in desperate need of some caffeine if she was going to manage the social media reactions of whatever was happening.  

What was happening anyways? “Thor?” she asked as she stared into the fridge sadly. No caffeine at all. “What exactly are y’all doing?”

“Hydra is attacking the Roswell facility,” Thor said. “Director Fury has requested our assistance is turning them from it.” He took Mjolnir off of the coat hooks by the front door to the apartment. (The fact that Mjolnir would just hang there was really weird. Thor and Jane had both tried to explain it but Darcy had just sort of glazed over.) “Jane did not wake when the alarm sounded,” he added. “Should I be concerned?”

“No, she’ll sleep through just about anything,” Darcy shrugged. “Though if she can sleep through that alarm I’m impressed.”

“I need to leave now, will you be alright getting to the offices?” Thor asked.

“Phil said they’d send someone to escort me if it was between the hours of 10 PM and 5 AM so that I’m not wandering around the city,” Darcy said. “I’ll be fine. But I cannot wait until the office is five minutes away from my bed.”

Thor nodded. “Jane has mentioned the same in regard to her lab space. Though I am concerned that she will sleep there rather than in a bed.”

“That’s a distinct possibility. You head out, I’ll leave a note for her on the coffee pot,” Darcy said. She scrounged for a pad of paper and a pen in their junk drawer. The fact that they already had a junk drawer despite being there for less than a month did not bode well for moving again when they moved into the Tower.

_Avengers mission with Hydra at the Roswell facility. You slept through the alarm on Thor’s phone. Don’t know how long it’ll take. PLEASE BRING ME BREAKFAST. AND COFFEE. – Darcy_

There was a quiet knock on the door and Darcy looked through the peephole to see Agent Barton standing on the other side of the door. When she pulled it open she asked, “Don’t you have a mission you should be going on? Or are you here to pick up Thor? He already left.”

“Nope, I’m here to pick up you,” Clint said. “My particular skills aren’t needed on the mission.”

“Archery isn’t going to help out with getting Hydra away from the base?” Darcy asked.

“I might’ve pulled a muscle sparring with Natasha and Medical won’t clear me for the mission,” Clint said wryly.

“Cool. Jane slept through the alarm so she’s still unconscious. Think we can get some coffee on the way?” Darcy asked, moving back into the apartment to grab her bag from where she’d left it in the kitchen.

“Already in the car waiting downstairs,” Clint said.

“You are my favorite person right now,” Darcy said as she locked up the apartment.

“You think you’re ready to handle your first Avengers mission?” Clint asked as they headed down to the waiting car

“I have no clue. At least it’s 3AM and there aren’t as many people around now,” Darcy said. “So I don’t know how many people are going to register it at the moment. I can only imagine later in the day there’s gonna be all sorts of Roswell and alien conspiracy theories to go through.”

“Yeah, but you’ll have to work all day. People are going to be finding out and talking for the rest of the day,” Clint pointed out.

“And that is why I left a note on the coffee pot instructing Jane to bring me coffee and food,” Darcy said.

It didn’t take too long to get to the temporary offices, given that it was 3AM. The offices were pretty sparse looking (not that they’d ever really looked all that put together in the first place) because it was T-3 days until the move into the permanent offices in Avengers Tower. The only thing that had ever really looked fully stocked and continued to be fully stocked was the coffee area. It wasn’t _good_ coffee, but it was coffee. Hopefully Jane showed up with better coffee before Darcy had to resort to the pot.

“Have you been told what the situation is?” Porter asked when she and Clint walked into the section for the PR team. He looked completely put together despite the ridiculous hour. So did most of the others that had shown up. She was gonna need some sort of Ready to Go outfit, wasn’t she?

“Thor said Hydra’s attacking the Roswell facility,” Darcy said. “Beyond that I don’t know.”

“Reports are that they’re looking for Dr. Foster’s research,” Clint said. “But we don’t know how trustworthy that information is. It does seem likely, however.”

“Wait, they’re looking for Jane’s research?” Darcy asked. That didn’t sound good. “Is Jane in danger? Should someone get her from the apartment?” She looked at Clint. “Shouldn’t Thor have _stayed_ with her?”

“You do realize that you all are in a secure SHIELD apartment building?” Clint asked her. “Doctor Foster is fine. The fact that they’re attacking the facility means that they think the information and research is there, not here in New York.”

“I – okay. That still sounds like Jane should have someone with her,” Darcy said.

“I’m sure Doctor Foster will be fine,” Porter said. “Now, I’ve assigned people to specifically look at Area 51 conspiracy websites. Focus on those aspects right now, but do keep other areas in my mind.”

“Will do,” Darcy said. She headed towards her desk and was surprised to find Clint following behind her. Her desk was by one of the TVs in the room which continuously played a news station. Usually they were muted so the distraction was really only due to the moving images.

Clint pulled a spare chair over to her desk and positioned it to face the TV. He kicked his feet up onto an unoccupied desk and fiddled with his phone before pulling a Bluetooth out and popping it in.

“What are you doing?” Darcy asked as she turned her fancy Stark upgraded desktop on. He said they didn’t need to be turned off, but old habits died hard.

“I’m getting Carolyn to give me a feed of the security cameras and a link to the comms,” Clint said. He paused. “Is that going to be distracting?”

“Probably,” Darcy said. But honestly, being able to know what was going on might help her peace of mind. Or make it even worse. The TV clicked to life and a multi split screen of security camera footage appeared. Wait. It was 3AM. “Why exactly is she awake?”

“Probably because Phil got notified of the shit going down and had to go into the office,” Clint said. “Also SHIELD agents don’t really have functioning or standard sleep cycles.” He tapped his Bluetooth and said, “Hello ladies, gentlemen, and your highness. This is your friendly Hawkeye speaking. I will be providing your eye in the – hey! I’m the one staring at the security footage and you guys aren’t there yet.”

“Tell Thor that Greg’s hiding in Jane’s lab with Trisha and some weapons,” Darcy said as she pulled up even more Twitter windows to track #area51, #aliens, and #roswell.

“What?” Clint asked. “Ah – they’re holding their own, but if you could punch the engines on the jet that’d be better. And Thor, Darcy says that there’s a Greg and a Trisha hiding in Jane’s lab space.”

“They were Jane’s assistants while we were there,” Darcy said. The team arrived at the base a few moments later, but Darcy was focused on the fact that someone had seen Tony / Iron Man rocketing out of the Tower and head south west. Which of course led to speculation and people in a variety of time zones to jump into the conversation.

Watching the security camera footage out of the corner of her eye and listening to Clint talk with half of her attention did not actually help her peace of mind. Knowing that there were two dudes behind Black Widow trying to shoot her in the head, or that Iron Man almost got shot down out of the sky, or that Captain America had gotten thrown into three separate walls in the span of ten minutes wasn’t actually all that comforting.

Twitter also wasn’t helping. Despite the time in New Mexico, people had actually noticed there was some sort of fight going on at a super-secret quasi-government base. So, of course, she had to deal with #roswell and #area51 going crazy. It was mostly monitoring, thankfully, rather than interacting and interfering.

“I brought coffee, please tell me what’s going on with – is that Greg?” Jane asked from behind Darcy.

Darcy glanced up at the TV and had to stare for a second. Greg was the only one visible on the security footage, but Darcy assumed that Trisha was still there, but probably hiding behind the table Greg was using as a barricade to shoot over at the Hydra goons that were trying to get into the lab.

“Can you please tell someone to save Greg and Trisha please,” Darcy told Clint. “I like them and they were able to keep up with Jane without any problems. Also, they know things.”

“Cap, you’re closest,” Clint said. “Hallway on your left, go past two intersections, make a right at the third. Doctor Foster’s assistants are under attack and barricaded into a lab.”

“What’s going on?” Jane asked. Jane was clutching the coffee tray in one hand, staring at the security footage in a combination of dread and shock. Darcy gently took the tray from Jane and set it down before Jane could spill it.

“Hydra is attacking the Roswell base,” Darcy said. “The Avengers are there to save the day.”

“Cap’s got Greg and Trisha,” Clint said, both to Jane and to the Avengers.

“Jane, sit,” Darcy said. “Help me with Twitter.” Jane did, but didn’t take her eyes off the television screen.

Darcy kept half an eye on Jane, half an eye on the variety of Twitter pages, and her ears on Clint’s running commentary of the level of shit going down at the Roswell facility. While it was massively distracting and didn’t help her anxiety about how everyone might actually get pounded, it did help in regard to knowing that nobody _had_ gotten pounded yet. Obviously, Thor was her favorite Avenger, but in the month-ish that she’d known the rest of the Avengers she’d grown fond of them. Some more than others, but that had more to do with Jan and Hank being in Chicago for a good chunk of time during the month. 

The fight (was it a fight?) went on for another twenty minutes or so, both somehow shorter and longer than Darcy had thought it would last. Her job wasn’t done, given that social media was speculating all sorts of reason why the Avengers might have been outside of Roswell.

“Who’s hurt?” Jane asked, her voice tight and strained. The coffee cup that she’d picked up was clenched between both of her hands and Darcy was pretty sure it hadn’t actually been touched beyond that.

“Well, Thor seems to be indestructible,” Clint said. “No serious injuries.”

“What about the base?” Jane asked. “Who was injured on the base?”

“I – I don’t have that information right now,” Clint said, finally turning to look at Jane. “I can get it for you if you want.”

“I want Greg and Trisha,” Jane said. “I want them here. You took Darcy away from me and I need a new assistant. I want them.”

“Okay,” Clint said. “I’ll bring that up with the Director and Agent Coulson.” Jane glared and he quickly said, “I will go do that right now,” and got up from the chair and pretty much booked it.

“Jane,” Darcy said gently. “Put the coffee down.”

Jane did and sighed heavily before resting her head in her hands. “That, that was not what I expected an Avengers mission to be like,” she said. “And I want them. If Hydra was after my research – which makes me wonder why nobody escorted me here rather than letting me wander the streets of New York on my own – then they were in danger directly because of me.”

“Yeah, I mentioned the whole ‘shouldn’t someone be watching Jane’ thing and the response was that it’s a secure SHIELD apartment building,” Darcy said. “But it wasn’t what I expected either.”

“How long do you think it’ll take for them to get back here?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know. They could be a while cleaning up even if Hydra skedaddled. Somebody’s got to find out how Hydra knew that we had been there, so they might try to work on that too. You can wait here for Thor if you want, but I’m going to be dealing with alien conspiracy theories all day,” Darcy said.

“I’ll wait here,” Jane said, sitting back up and stared at the TV that still showed security camera footage. She picked her coffee back up and took a sip of what Darcy knew to be pretty room temperature coffee given that hers had reached that state a short while before. As predicted, Jane made a face at the cold coffee. “First I’ll get some new coffee.”

“Trust me when I say that reheated is going to be better than anything new coming out of the pot,” Darcy said. “I am sincerely hoping that Stark springs for some fancy ass coffee makers in the Tower.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story did a lot of things I wasn't expecting it to. It had a mind of its own. It created a sub plot I wasn't going to write and created background characters all on its own.


End file.
